Fixed assets, no matter if you are a professional services company or a retailer, are the same. For the sake of focus, though, I'll focus on professional services. Fixed assets are assets purchased by the company for long-term use to support ongoing business operations. For example, fixed assets are laptops, desks, and trucks, to name a few. This is where the distinction between inventory and fixed assets becomes important and obvious. Because fixed assets have a longer life and will be used for multiple projects and multiple accounting periods, GAP imposes a different accounting procedure than that used for inventory management. According to the GAP, fixed assets are part of the non-current assets of the balance sheet. This simply means that the asset is unlikely to turn into cash within a year. Consequently, their purchase price must be depreciated over the useful life of the asset and the asset must also be depreciated over its life. If that sounds like a lot, we haven't yet explained how credits and debits occur within the fixed asset balance sheet, and I promise it's more complex than inventory management. So I'll save you time by not detailing it